Is there a requirement for an annual income review for a divorce in California?

[Ohiogal]

Ldij is a tax professional. You, by your own admission, at best dabble.

a) OP wife is proposing an irrevocable trust.

b) The life insurance is only paid out after OP dies, so while OP is alive, the "taxation of life insurance" is not a concern.

Yes, good estate planning takes taxes into consideration. However, your concerns for the hypothetic adult children seem a bit overblown.

The simple answer to OP's question is: no, you don't have to agree to everything your stbx asks for. Whether a judge would order these things depends largely on a particular cases circumstances. In many cases it would be unlikely, as the modern thinking is that a woman should be expected to stand on her own two feet.

However, there are exceptions. If OP has not already retained an atty, an initial consultation would be worthwhile.

Careful here.. we have no clue what is meant by the words "tax professional" -- maybe she works for H&R Block ... we don't know. I have asked her about her training. She refuses to answer. She has also been unable to state simple tax information that I have found and I am NOT a tax person at all.

 

[LdiJ]

If op retains any incidents of control over his own life insurance policy it could well be taxed to his estate while ex gets full payout ..and merely converting existing policy to insurance trust invites a 3 year look back to add it to estate inside of 3 years. if op gets run over by proverbial beer truck

Life insurance proceeds are NOT taxable income.

if Op is looking at paying Ex a stream of $ xx for Yy years it's not hard math to do a discount back to present value under various rate of return assumptions and perhaps some rudimentary risk calculations ...I'm not the best of investors....but I'll bet my 10 year moving average on ROI is at least 10% so if you offer me 5000 shares of SSS worth $ Xxx,xxx or whatever as a walkaway number ..I can make up my mind pretty fast ..and might just prefer big bird in hand now and move on.

Again, one big old ramble that might actually have a shred of decent advise in it if you chose to put it in plain and understandable language.